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By Oh Young-jin, Jane Han
SEOUL and DALLAS ― In Korea, people are trying to organize boycotts online against Starbucks products after it was revealed an NBC Sports commentator who belittled Koreans while broadcasting the PyeongChang Olympics belonged to the global coffee maker's board.
Momsholic Baby, an internet cafe with over 2.6 million members, most of them housewives, had its chat board abuzz with calls to stop going to Starbucks over Joshua Cooper Ramo.
One poster said, "This really upsets me and I decided to stop going to Starbucks."
"We are not aware of any visible signs of boycott," a Starbucks Korea official told The Korea Times. "I understand the person in question made apologies."
A boycott is happening in the U.S. as well.
Koreans in the U.S., mainly housewives, have huddled up again.
They're furious at the java giant's board member, who NBC fired over his Olympic opening ceremony remarks about Japan's 1910-45 occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
"Every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation," Ramo said during the opening ceremony of the PyeongChang Games last Friday.
And these words immediately set off Koreans not only in Korea, but also in the U.S.
"I was relaxing, enjoying every moment of that opening ceremony and, bam, I hear the most absurd and ignorant words coming out of the commentator's mouth," said Sohn Min-kyung, 38, a Los Angeles resident.
"I was so mad, but I had no idea who on earth he was, so I looked him up online."
It turns out, Koreans from all parts of the U.S. did just that and they put together a game plan in various popular online communities.
"He lost his position at NBC, but who cares about that? It was just a one-time gig anyway," one user wrote on MissyCoupons, an online rebate and coupon site with a major following among Korean women in the U.S. "His real job is at Starbucks so that's what we need to target."
Dozens of threads initiating and supporting a boycott against Starbucks picked up hundreds of comments coming from all those who pledged to ditch the mega coffee chain.
"Let's please not make this a temporary boycott. We need to be diligent and we need to make this boycott spread to Korea. Only then Starbucks will notice," wrote another user, who among many others suggested ways to involve people in their motherland.
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